The present invention relates, generally, to the field of multimedia content provision systems, and in particular, to a method and system for determining a best price for multimedia content being offered to users.
Digital Media today is more popular than it has ever been. Digital media can be categorized as Syndicated Content and User Generated Content (UGC). Syndicated content is mostly professionally generated with an expensive video camera and edited with sophisticated tools, therefore sold at a price, whereas the User Generated content is created by an amateur (anyone) with a basic camera and is distributed free of cost. Examples of Syndicated content are Movies and Music video and examples of UGC are pictures of a baby taken by parent. Syndicated content can be made available to viewers in two forms—by broadcasting the content to many users at the same time, for example, broadcasting a sitcom on a TV channel or by offering the content to the users in an interactive fashion, for example, offering specific movies to a customer by interactively seeking her preferences. The prime difference between these modes of distribution is presence or absence of commercials. Broadcast TV offers syndicated content to users at a price that is derived based on a number of commercials that are available. On the other hand, interactive TV offers content to users on a premium, with little or no commercials.
Interactive distribution of content which allows users to choose what they want, when they want has enabled many new business models for content monetization. Content offers such as Pay per View (PPV), rent-a-movie, bundles and subscription are among the many that are used to sell content on Interactive TV. Video storefronts on the Internet allow buying or renting of movies, music videos and TV programs at a price to anyone on the Interactive TV and the Internet.
Video on Demand (VoD) systems are used to distribute syndicated content to users interactively. VoD systems allow users to choose content using the Internet or an application on a set-top box. The content is distributed by streaming it through the set-top box, or downloading content onto a device such as a computer, digital video recorder, personal video recorder or portable media player for viewing at a later time.
The traditional broadcast TV model of distribution has a number of drawbacks. The program on Broadcast TV is played as per a predefined schedule called Program Guide therefore users have to stick to the schedule if they want to watch a program and have no control over it. Since the pricing model for broadcast TV includes inclusion of commercials, commercials, which may discourage users from continuing to watch the content, need to be shown throughout the broadcast. Moreover, the users also do not get an option to reduce the commercial break duration.
From a service provider's perspective, broadcast TV does not allow flexibilities in the commercials schedule for a particular content as broadcasting is scheduled before hand. Further, advertisers get less time to impress users with their products as top rated shows on TV have many advertisers. Broadcast TV is primarily broadcast in nature therefore the syndicated content is broadcasted to all users at the same time. This makes it difficult to target users with relevant commercials in the broadcast. Targeted advertising for a particular geographical location is possible, but broadcast TV doesn't allow granularity to the last detail of a particular user. Further, there exist users who are willing to pay a small premium for reduced commercials duration for certain content. No provision exists in the current broadcast TV model to monetize such opportunities.
On the other hand, Interactive TV services like VoD allow users to choose any video from a catalog and view it at his/her convenience. The users have to buy the VoD content before viewing it. Further, content on VoD Catalog have little or no commercials during telecast which means that the price of the content is high and all users have to pay the same price to view the video. All content in VoD catalog has a fixed set of offers associated with it. The offer price cannot be varied for individual users to sell content. The offer price of VoD content defines the volume of people buying the offer. E.g. During a movie premier, the content is priced high therefore attracting only few users to watch the movie. As the price is reduced over time the movie becomes affordable to the masses. Since Interactive TV is not commercials driven the number of ads in TV are very few. Hence, interactive TV's ability to show context sensitive and targeted ads to its consumers is not exploited to its potential.
Hence, there is a need for a system and a method that allows users to negotiate price of the syndicated content that is offered for viewing. Further, the system and method also needs to provide the user with an option of watching the content at a premium rate to forego any commercials that are shown. Furthermore, the system and the method should allow the service provider to target users based on their profile and preferences.